Wake of Darkness (23 page)

Her eyes were like liquid fire.
“What the hell?” She shrieked at him.
Are you trying to kill me?! Are you
crazy?

He was before her in an instant,
grasping her face between his hands.

“Don’t you see?” he asked. “
That
is the power you have, Sophie.” His intensity was so fierce that his hands were
trembling.

She started to shake her head no.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He dropped his hands and nodded.
“Here, make the paperweight move,” he said, gesturing to the heavy glass orb
sitting on the table beside him. He watched her with almost frenzied eyes.

“You’re crazy, you know?”

She looked at the paperweight,
skeptical.
Move the paperweight, huh?
She thought, and it moved a couple
of inches across the tabletop. Her mouth fell open.

“Are you
kidding
me?” She
asked.

He shook his head as a crooked
smile crept across his face.

Sophie looked back at the
paperweight and willed it to float. Her breath caught as she watched it hover effortlessly
over the table; her hands were at her sides.

She stared wide-eyed at the weight.
“Oh, this is going to be
cool
.” But then her smile faded and the
paperweight fell to the floor. “I don’t know if I can choke one again like
that, though. That took some crazy concentration.”

“We’ll work on it,” he promised.

Jim suddenly burst into the room
with Laney fast on his heels. “What’s going on in here? We heard a crash.”

“Watch this!” Sophie said.

She looked at the paperweight that
was lying on the floor and moved it back up to the top of the table, allowing
it to rest gently in its place, all with the power of her mind only.

Laney started clapping her hands
and jumping up and down. “Do it again!”

Sophie looked behind her at the
book Alexander had thrown at her, laying in a disheveled heap. It was suddenly
righting itself and gliding gracefully back to its spot on the high shelf—all at
Sophie’s command. She looked below the shelf to where Alexander was standing
and watched a proud smile spread across his face.

“It’s so easy,” Sophie muttered to herself.
“I had no idea.”

“I do it all the time,” Laney
chimed in smugly.

“Yeah, but
I
don’t,” Sophie
replied.

“True,” Laney conceded, but Sophie
wasn’t even thinking of her.

She looked at Alexander. “Thank you
for believing in me,” she whispered.

He shook his head. “You are so
quick to place your faith in others, but not yourself.”

“It’s just really hard to believe
that it’s been inside
me
all this time,” she tried to explain, her smile
fading into something a little sadder.
Just think what I could have…

He narrowed his eyes at her,
hearing the thoughts as they ran through her head, before she suddenly halted
them in their tracks. His eyebrows furrowed in frustration, trying to grasp
onto the image that flashed through her head.

Jim clapped his hands together. “Come
on! Let’s go show everybody else!”

“Go,” Alexander whispered encouragingly
to her, but watching her warily, still thinking of the images she’d so quickly
concealed.

Sophie gave him a small smile,
turned on a heel and followed Jim out the door, disappearing before she was
halfway across the room, leaving Laney behind with Alexander.

Chapter 21

Alexander turned to Laney once
Sophie and Jim had left the room. “Have you seen anything in the future that I
should know about?”

“You mean about Sophie?” she asked,
picking at the hem of her dark purple dress.

“Yes.”

Laney thought a moment and then
shook her head. “No, I haven’t seen anything. Is everything okay?”

“It seems that way,” he replied.

“She’s really getting the hang of
things, isn’t she?”

“Indeed.”

“Well, I’ll let you know if I see
anything,” she offered with a shrug.

“Thank you.”

She smiled. “I’m going to go see
what everyone else is up to.”

He followed her out of the room and
past the staircase where Celia, Chaz, and Masumi were coming into the room.
Virtually ignoring them, Alexander turned the corner to walk into the dining
room but stopped short, finding Sophie juggling pieces of fruit with her mind
before an audience of their family members.

Zoey was laughing at Sophie in
amazement. “Here’s another one,” she said. With a flick of her wrist, Zoey sent
another orange over to Sophie, who moved the additional piece of fruit into
orbit with the others.

A smile crept across Alexander’s
face. The image would have been comical except for the implications of what it
would mean later—when something deadlier than citrus fruits would be subjected
to Sophie’s power.

“I suggested she practice,” Dante
said.

Alexander nodded. “Good idea.”

“Catch,” Sophie said, hurling an
orange to him without touching it.

He reflexively snatched it from the
air just as Celia turned the corner. She let out a scoff as she came to a
surprised halt, and looked quickly between Alexander and Sophie.

Sophie met her gaze with more
confidence now, steadier than before. When her eyes traveled to Celia’s, they
changed; they became something dark, as something almost black boiled behind
them.

Without looking away, Sophie moved
her hand and the pieces of fruit settled back into their bowl on the table. She
suddenly spun on a heel and headed towards the back door, but then stopped
short.

“What is it?” Dante asked.

“Nothing,” Sophie replied. “I
thought I heard something.” She looked to Zoey for affirmation.

Zoey shook her head.
I don’t
hear anything.

 “That was impressive,” Celia quietly
commented from behind Alexander.

“You have
no
idea,” he
responded, without turning to look at her.

“I’m sure I don’t,” she replied
incredulously.

Alexander glanced over to the
corner where Catherina sat on a stool, humming tunelessly to herself. He’d
known her for long enough to realize the change that seemed to have abruptly
taken hold of her over the past few weeks. She seemed half-crazed, but focused,
maniacally driven by unseen forces as she rocked back and forth on the stool. Perhaps
it was fear which motivated her, or perhaps it was the feelings of inadequacy
that Sophie was likely imposing on the older woman that changed her, but he
couldn’t know for sure. Catherina was unreadable.

Laney?
Thought Dante.

She smiled and responded by
flittering into the kitchen, opening cabinets and pulling dishes out to swiftly
set the table, which would be full tonight. Alexander silently watched her
dance around it, placing items gently on the table. Sophie slipped her willowy
arm under Alexander’s to wrap it around his waist; his lips grazed her
forehead. She sighed as she leaned against him. And just as quickly as she had
grasped him, she was pulling away. He never seemed ready to let her go.

Catherina sat at the head of the
table as always, Dante to her right. Alexander assumed his customary seat at
the table’s foot and Sophie next to him. The rest of the table was filled and
Celia slowly lowered herself into the chair directly across from Sophie who
stared relentlessly at her.

Celia was the first to look away
this time. Zoey and Jim exchanged a look, and Laney watched Celia carefully.

Sophie sat back in her chair. “So,
why are you really here, Celia?”

All other sound abruptly stopped
and everyone else sat as still as statues, watching the two women on either
side of Alexander.

A slow smile crept across Celia’s
face. She shrugged. “We were just passing through and wanted to know if the
rumors of a vampire war were legit.”

Sophie’s eyebrow shot up in
response.

“And…I had to see for myself.”

“
What
did you have to see
for yourself?”

“I had to see who Alexander
the
Great
,” her voice dripping with sarcasm, “finally chose.”

Alexander stiffened at the tone of
her voice and turned to glare at her, a subtle rumbling deep within his chest.

“Ah!
There
it is,” Sophie
replied, slapping the table with her hand and laughing.

“News travels fast,” Jim
interjected.

Alexander watched Sophie. Her
laughter diminished to a disgusted smile. “Is that all?” she asked, a hint of
surprise behind her words.
Pretty lame, if you ask me.

Alexander disguised a chuckle as a
cough.

Celia wasn’t giving an inch. “We
want to inform you that
we
have no quarrel with Jacques and the others. We’ll
not take part in whatever it is you all have going on here. Austin is
uncomfortably close to the region this family regularly frequents. We have no
desire to be dragged into
this
conflict,” she added, gesturing to them
swiftly with her fork.

“Satisfied?” There was no malice in
Sophie’s solid eyes, but most of the diners would have thought twice before crossing
her.

Celia nodded once more.

“Good,” finished Sophie with the
smile.

*

Sophie knocked on the doorframe to
Alexander’s office as he sat reading. He looked up to find her standing in the
doorway and smiled. He could hear Jim and Chaz talking downstairs, Masumi and
Celia interjecting occasionally. They were talking sports.

Jim likes everyone, the fool,
Alexander
thought to himself.

Sophie nodded. Her eyes drifted to
the book in his hands. “Clausewitz?”

“Some human theories are also
useful against vampires,” he replied and watched her from his chair as she
walked over to his bed to sit.

“’
Know thy enemy, know thy self?’
”

“That’s Sun Tzu, but the idea’s the
same.”

“It makes sense.” As if she
couldn't sit still, she stood and looked out the window; the nervous energy
radiated off of her. He closed the book and studied her face for a minute as
she gazed out the window. To him, her face was the most precious in the world,
and as the moonlight hit her eyes, even in the dim light, they shone.

He took a deep breath. “What’s
bothering you?”

“You said something earlier…about
the Council and their organization. What exactly did you mean by that?”

He cleared his throat. “It’s an
intricate system. At the very core of the vampire world is a queen.”

She raised her eyebrows in surprise,
but didn’t interrupt him.

“Hero is quite ancient, perhaps
several thousand years old. There once was a king as well, though he was
killed. Some believe that it was Hero herself who murdered her husband, but no
one in the vampire world has attempted to pursue the accusations to the point
of any sort of investigation. It’s a good way to get killed.

“Initially, around the king and
queen, there was a council—the
Consilium Strigis:
Council of the
Vampires. It was a time of monarchs, and they strove to be like their human
counterparts. Hero retained the officers and expanded the Council to include
ministers from all parts of the world. There are twelve minister sets of three
each.”

She shook her head.

“The regions are split into
countries or large sections of the globe. There are miniature councils in
Brazil, the remainder of South America, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia,
India, Africa together with the Middle East, the Mediterranean, Australia,
Canada, Mexico and of course, the United States.”

She looked at him. “So, there are
three members of the Council in charge of the U.S.?”

“Yes and each have many contacts
and coven leaders throughout their regions who report to them, creating a sort
of network. The three Councilors for the United States are Cusick, Sloane, and
Bennett. Bennett is relatively new to the Council, and she has recently
accepted the charge of the western part of the United States. Sloane maintains
the traditional north; Cusick monitors the south.”

She sank down to sit on the edge of
his bed. He went on.

“One reason Jacques is a
significant
challenge, aside from the obvious, is that he is one of the coven heads who
reports directly to Cusick, therefore possessing a direct line of communication
with the Council as a whole.”

“
Great
, so anything we do
that involves him…”

“…will be known almost immediately
by the entire Council.”